After much deliberation, we at Code Z decided to step into that bear trap known as the year-end countdown. Seems to us that folks love to hate countdowns; everyone wants to know who or what made the cut, and yet it's a foregone conclusion that almost no one will agree with the final list. We asked 9 leading cultural figures active in various parts of the visual culture world to help navigate us through those rocky waters with their ideas and nominations. We were hoping for a mixed bag, and that's just what we got. In that spirit we offer the following 20 moments that (re-)defined Black visual culture in 2006 in hopes that it inspires, surprises, and maybe pisses a few people off.
#20 Aaron McGruder Quits The Boondocks Comic Strip
This one caught the 300-plus newspapers running McGruder's strip off guard last September. Not that the world has been deprived of Huey and Riley, thanks to the wildly popular Boondocks animated series on the Cartoon Network. In fact, we theorize that McGruder quit writing the strip because his pens got lost... under a pile of money.
#19 Daniel Alexander Jones Hits the Jackpot
Daniel received the high-profile and high-dollar Alpert Award in 2006 for his interdisciplinary work rooted in the U.S. Black avant-garde theater movement. As a young, queer artist of color, the props are all the more meaningful. Oh, and the 50 grand in award money doesn't hurt anything.
#18 Imperial War Museum Commemorates African Soldiers
Raphael Chikukwa's Afrikan Heroes at the IWM in Manchester, Great Britain had the rare quality of changing the way we see the world in an instant. Recovering submerged WWII history, Raphael showed us Nigerian soldiers fighting in the Middle East and Zimbabweans combating the Japanese in Burma. This sort of vision change gives us hope that art makes a difference.
#17 David Adjaye Redesigns inIVA
David inked the deal for the design of Rivington Place, the prospective new home for London's inIVA back in January. Not only is the construction project large and important in its own right, it's all the more remarkable given David's subtle references to the traditional mud structures of Mali in the building's highly contemporary design.
#16 Tyler Perry Tops Out... Again
We include playwright Tyler Perry on the list because the man has conquered nearly every media form available and hasn't let up yet. In April of 2006, his book Don't Make a Black Woman Take off Her Earrings debuted at Number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Ah Tyler, you so crazy...
#15 Barack Obama Goes High Fashion
The wunderkind of U.S. lefty politics showed up more than once on the cover of national magazines in 2006. What's remarkable is how often they were fashion rags. Black man as sex symbol has been done; politician as sex symbol has been done. But we don't remember seeing any black politician portrayed in this particularly glamorous way. Al Sharpton's hair doesn't count.
#14 Daphne A. Brooks' Bodies in Dissent Published
We're going out on a limb with this one, but we're betting this book will become a touchstone in the understanding of Black visual culture for years to come. You heard it here first.
#13 SMH Drops Frequency
The Studio Museum's Frequency, which closed in March, introduced a whole new generation of young, hip Black artists to the New York art scene. We think this show will do for this group (which included Rashawn Griffin, Zoë Charlton, and Jefferson Pinder) what Freestyle did for that group in 2001--although we do wish a term as explosively controversial as "Post Black" had emerged from this exhibition, too.
#12 Poland Gets Black Art
Maria Brewinska, curator of Black Alphabet in Warsaw, Poland, has claimed that her group show last fall constituted Europe's first exhibition of "the most powerful elements" of Black visual art from the U.S. Our... ahem... research department suspects that this is not true, strictly speaking, since France fell in love with Black America in the 1920s and 30s, but it is certainly the first in a long, long while.
#11 DC Comics Get Colorful
In what we've been told is the "unchecked racism" of the comic book industry, we think it's remarkable that DC undertook to recast many of its heroes in a new, ethnically diverse light, including creating a black Firestorm. Black comics have been active for decades, but we see something notable in the convergence of worlds represented here.
#10 Okwui Enwezor Flexes Muscle in Seville
In what is quickly becoming a crowded marketplace of international biennials, Spain's Seville show is a new kid on the block. That Nigerian-born über-curator Okwui Enwezor has been the one to help add muscle to the fledgling event as its artistic director is a major nod to Enwezor's already high profile. In the 2nd International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville; The Unhomely: Phantom Scenes in Global Society, Enwezor brought 91 creative entities together pushing Seville to a new level. Of special note is the adept unification of place, space, transience, and personage under one banner. Second, we applaud Enwezor for weaving the stories of the Black Diaspora into the issues surrounding the friction of globalization and dispersal. Representing the home team are Kojo Griffin, Lyle Ashton Harris, Julie Mehretu, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Wangechi Mutu, to name a few.
#9 Gordon Parks Joins the Ancestors
A picture is worth a thousand words, but more are required to adequately explain the void left by the passing of the multi-talented photographer Gordon Parks in March (1912-2006). In our age of digital magic, Mr. Parks made magic with his eye, heart, and soul. From his photograph American Gothic, and his work for Life Magazine, to The Learning Tree and the Blaxploitation masterpiece Shaft, Gordon was a pioneer and innovator in a cultural and social landscape that didn't see him coming. And while many are willing and able to carry his torch, we're surely sad to see him go.
#8 Zambia Mounts its First Film Festival
After achieving independence in the late 1960's, Zambia appeared poised to inherit the wind. However, civil war, and the diminished value of natural resources made Zambia one of the most debt-ridden nations in the world. Nevertheless, this year we saw a birth in Zambia; and birthday's are always cause for celebration. The 1st Annual International Film Festival of Zambia, which wrapped in mid-November 2006, had one purpose: to present "(f)ilms that celebrate our day-to-day experience, the past and culture." Simple and straight to the point--just like the truth. This surely was not the biggest or most prestigious film festival in the world, but the fact that it was the first means that we've seen a major change occur right in front of us.
#7 New Media Blips on the Radar
If the revolution will not be televised, then maybe it will spark within those digital villages. We note that discussion about new media and art continued to be held in panels and conferences around the world in 2006. Torkwase Dyson's "Algorithmeticblackbase10" last August at The High Museum in Atlanta and the "New Media and African American Poetics" panel at the 10th Anniversary Cave Canem celebration last October in New York City are two of the more notable instances. We also note the presence of new media artists Mendi + Keith Obadike in both of the aforementioned events, as wells as DJ Spooky's continued buck wild ramblings around the globe, which this year included Venice and Luanda, Angola among other locales. Had we seen another AfroGEEKS conference this year, this surely would have garnered a higher spot, but we think #7 is not too shabby.
#6 Benny Andrews Joins the Ancestors
We note another loss this year. Artist Benny Andrews (1930-2006), who was born in Madison, Georgia to a sharecropper, went on to become a man of international fame, in an age where artists from the southern U.S. can still face labels of "regional." And while artists of color find themselves under blanket headings of "Black," "Latino," etcetera, Andrews transcended all of that decades before many of us were born. Educated in part by his father, a self-taught artist, Fort Valley State University, and the Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. Andrews' work focused purposefully on the people. Whether depicting scenes of his upbringing, teaching art to prisoners at The Tombs in New York, or taking the Art World old guard to task for its lack of diversity, Benny Andrews' passion for art was about folk and their ways, and the things that affected them. Given Andrews' involvement in teaching, arts advocacy and activism, his energies are likely to be missed for quite some time. Benny Andrews blazed a trail and paved a path for us to follow, and it's only right that we oblige.
#5 Spike Lee Returns
Love him or hate him, you gotta give it up to Spike Lee, who made something of an artistic comeback in 2006. If you hate him, you have to at least admit this year's Inside Man is not only his tightest movie in a while, but possibly the best role that Denzel Washington has had since, dare we say, Malcolm X or Devil in a Blue Dress. And if not for that, then perhaps you can extend Mr. Lee some credit for producing When the Levees Broke, which many have called the definitive documentary on last year's Hurricane Katrina, and its effects. Spike's work has been called many things, among them preachy, scattered, and hateful. Say what you will about his past work, but Inside Man and Levees are none of those things. While thematically different, we think that they have to be the most effective cinematic one-two punch that movie making has seen in some time. Spike is one of a handful of Black power players in Hollyweird that can have challenging material actually see a commercial audience. If this year is any indication--and we hope that it is--he's poised to show the world that he really does have game.
#4 MoAD Opens in San Francisco
"Using objects of art and culture as catalysts to tell the story of the African Diaspora past and present, MoAD is a virtual crossroads for people around the globe."
One of the definitions of Diaspora is "People settled far from their ancestral homelands." With the surge that is globalization and outsourcing, many are hopping continents in search of many things. Couple that with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the recent groundbreaking of The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, and we realize that there is still room for remembrance and enlightenment in the U.S. of the new millennium. So it's only right that we give praise to the Museum of the African Diaspora, which opened in December of 2005. Located in San Francisco, California, MoAD transcends the physical structure and is more than a showplace for historical artifacts.
To present materials that give points of reference, and spark nostalgia, is one thing. But to actively contribute to the dialogue that is sorely lacking between historical and contemporary art and taste makers earns MoAD a special place in Code Z's heart.
#3 U. of Westminster Continues Innovative Architecture Program
When we talk about gentrification and re-urbanization, it's not always just about the "haves" and the "have-nots." On the contrary, coupled with the possibility of no longer being able to afford to live in an area that one may have always called home, there are also issues around failures in communication. But all of that may be changing slowly.
Many a college student can be heard lamenting what their alma mater lacks when it comes to the curriculum, but we suspect that fewer of those cries will be coming from architecture students in London. In 2005, The University of Westminster inaugurated its Master of Art in Architecture, Cultural Identity and Globalisation program, which continued this year with even more enrollment from African and Asian students. Leave it up to the Brits to develop a graduate level degree that focuses on architecture as it relates to race and culture, and vice versa. But we're thankful that someone in academia not only understands that it takes a village to make functional neighborhoods and work environments, but proposes to do something about it.
The program boasts meditations on the work of artists, filmmakers, and writers as a catalyst for producing truly aesthetic and functional dwellings. Weaving ideas of how buildings look and feel to those that encounter them adds a needed layer to the traditional consideration and implementation of architecture, which is grounded in the rationale of mathematics. Thanks to the University of Westminster, architecture now even more radically incorporates ideas of sociology, psychology, and spirituality, and allows city dwellers to view buildings as living, breathing creations that grow with the needs of their inhabitants.
#2 Black High Fashion Explodes
From the moment that hip-hop culture exploded onto the global scene, heads were checkin' out the recipe and bitin' the styles. Whether hair styles, emcee-approved footwear, or the ubiquitous baggy pants, Black culture--appearance wise--was embraced fully. Now, that we've grown up a little, and have diversified our wardrobe with some haute couture and grown and sexy ensembles, Black designers are no longer relegated to the Cross Colours clearance rack approach when considering who their potential customers may be, or what they may be willing to wear. And we here at Code Z aren't the only ones who have noticed.
2006 has seen an unabashed celebration and marked acceptance of Blacks in fashion. We only have to look to designer Tracy Reese, who created a buzz during New York's 2005 and 2006 Fashion Week and Mr. Cross Colours himself, Karl Kani, who recently launched his new high fashion clothing line. Also of great importance is The Museum of the City of New York's current exhibition Black Style Now. Touted as "A groundbreaking exploration of hip-hop style and the black fashion revolution," BSN uses New York as lens to focus on the trends and trendsetters who kept jazz hipsters wrapped in the finest vines, and hip-hop heads fresh to death. In the end we have a show that effectively bridges the gap between understanding the power of African Americans as creators and consumers.
Even in the overly homogenized world of television, 2006 saw two stars burn bright via reality television programs. The Bravo network's Project Runway (in its third season) found a sensation in contestant Mychael Knight (a.k.a. Michael Knight). While not the winner, Knight won accolades for his innovation. He also won the Viewers Choice Award which included a $10,000 prize. On the other end of the dial, UPN/CW to be exact, America's Next Top Model (entering its seventh season) saw Danielle Evans crowned as winner of the 6th Season contest. Although labeled as too "country," Evans pulled it out in the end. What's even more notable is that ANTM is the brainchild of Black model-turned-burgeoning-media-mogul, Tyra Banks. The host of both a daytime television talk show and ANTM, Banks reinforces the notion that we're on the brink of a new reality. People are watching.
And Code Z's Number 1 Moment that (Re-)defined Black Visual Culture in 2006:
Wait for it... wait for it...
#1 The Changing Face of the Urban Environment
We select this "moment" for the incredible impact it has on hundreds of millions of people around the world and for the fact that the changes in the urban landscape will certainly have an impact felt for generations. Its effects on all areas of visual culture from architecture to painting to graphic design are certainly only beginning to be understood.
The Last Poets said that things were changing back in 1970 on their landmark recording "Niggers Are Scared of Revolution," a somewhat ironic title considering the riots and other unrest that came about after the King, X, and R.F.K. assassinations. But a riot does not a revolution make, we note. Change is the thing, and what's really changing is the way the human animal lives. With the advent and explosion of Internet access, technological advances, outsourcing and globalization, we are all coming together in this increasingly smaller world. According to the Urban Age "The world is entering an urban age…[M]ore than half of the earth's population will soon live in urbanised areas, and extended metropolitan landscapes will become the predominant form of human settlement." And sub-saharan Africa is leading the way with the world highest rate of urbanization.
The Urban Age conference series (a two-year endeavor) aims to explore the effects of our psychologically shrinking world. Most notably, conference theorists are beginning to suggest that overcrowded megalopolises such as Lagos are in fact augurs of the future, not the past. Tackling such issues as "Labour Market and Work Places," "Mobility and Transport," "Public Life and Urban Space," and "Housing and Urban Neighbourhoods," Urban Age hopes to contribute to the dialogue surrounding how to make urban areas fully functional for those that live and work in them. From the edges of the favelas, to the heart of Wall Street, how do we make the city work for us? The answer may lie with Johannesburg. Site of Urban Age's July 2006 conference, and once considered behind the curve, cities like Johannesburg have become the global example of urbanization in light of their expansive growth.
From Roman city planning, to artist Hans Haacke battling slumlords, and most recently Ethiopian artist Julie Mehretu's interpretive/investigative work, the city has been, and will be on our minds for some time. Mehretu's own words best summarize how we live today. In describing her work, she defines it as "multifaceted layers of place, space, and time that impact the formation of personal and communal identity." If that isn't any metropolitan area in 2006, then we don't know what is, which alone may make Mehretu one of the most important artists of the 21st century.
With traditional urban areas shifting from Black to Brown, and Brown to Black in places such as the U.S. and France, we are reminded that how we live is just as important as where. In an opposing trend for example, an unprecedented number of U.S. Blacks are relocating from major northern industrial cities to the rural south, and Harlem's burbling gentrification seemed to reach a tipping point this year, as that area of New York City is seeing the lowest percentage of Blacks it has seen in decades.
Now that this topic has been undertaken by The University of Westminster, and the 2006 10th Venice Architecture Biennale, which focused solely "for the first time [on] how architecture and civic life are interconnected, focusing on the future of cities in the 21st century, the 'urban age'," perhaps we will soon awake in a brave new world.
Effie Brown is an independent film producer based in Los Angeles, California. Her company "Duly Noted" maintains a constant roster of projects in development and in production.
Faith Childs is a legendary literary agent and founder of the Faith Childs Literary Agency based in New York. Her clients have included Thulani Davis, Benilde Little, Paule Marshall, Valerie Wilson Wesley, and Ralph Wiley, among others.
Valerie Cassel Oliver was recently named a full curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston after a tenure as associate curator. She has organized several critically acclaimed exhibitions including Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970 and Boys Behaving Badly.
Lesley Naa Norle Lokko is an accomplished architect and writer from Ghana. Lokko is a principal of Lokko Associates, Accra, Ghana. She is also the author of two novels and is currently at work on a third novel.
Bernard Lumpkin is a New York-based art collector, focusing on artists of the African Diaspora. He is also a producer for several MTV productions.
Andrew Njoroge is a photographer and director of AfricanColours.net. He commutes between Bombay, India and Nairobi, Kenya.
DJ Spooky, born Paul D. Miller, is a Washington, D.C. native who specializes in illbient and trip-hop music as an accomplished turntablist and producer. DJ Spooky is also a professor of music at the where he co-teaches intensive summer seminars in Switzerland.
James Spooner is the director of the documentary film Afro Punk, a 66-minute documentary, exploring race identity within the punk scene. He produced his film mostly out of New York as a DIY effort. Today it is an award-winning documentary that has been shown around the world.
We would also like to thank M.R. Daniel, Carl Pope, Tim Portlock, and James Ainsworth for additional contributions to this story.
